There are also the innumerable problems associated with gaining support from the employee’s boss for the employee’s absence. And what about colleagues who often must pick up the employee’s workload? It is usually much easier to gain permission for a one-time absence, even if it is for an extended period of time, than for repeated short-term absences from the workplace. Much as it takes time to adjust to the learning mode when attending a distributed program, so it takes time to get back into the work mode after returning from this program. Part of the distraction back at the work site concerns the transfer of learning from the training or education program; however, this distraction is not always appreciated by those working with the employee while he is transferring the new skills or knowledge. They are more likely to perceive this transfer as clumsiness, confusion, or a lack of attention: “What’s wrong with Jim. He’s like this every time he comes back from one of those silly training sessions.” “I don’t know what Susan is learning at that seminar, but whatever it is, it has certainly messed things up around here!”
What does all of this suggest? The advantages and drawbacks all point to organizational maturity. A distributed program that is offered on-site is often best used when there is fairly sophisticated and broad-based support for employee development in the organization. An organization that is actually committed to learning will embrace distributed learning. This commitment must move past rhetoric if distributed education and training is to be something more than an annoyance. An organization that embraces distributed development must fully embrace the need for ongoing education and training. Its leaders must seek to create a learning organization that is aligned with a rapidly changing world of technology and a world of shifting customer wants and needs.
If these organizational conditions do not exist, there are still ways in which the distributed mode can be effective. The distributed program can be designed in ways that address some of the drawbacks. The initial session can be rather lengthy, like an intensive program, and the follow-up sessions can be rather brief or individualized. Over the past five years, distributed programs have often been structured as intensive programs that are followed up with individualized coaching. In this way, the rich learning that occurs in the intensive programs is coupled with the rich transfer of learning that occurs when additional sessions are distributed, by means of coaching, over a more extended period of time. In the future, we are likely to see much more frequent coupling of intensive training and education with coaching. We are also likely to see frequent coupling of intensive training and education with the fourth mode of employee development, just-in-time training and education, to which I now turn.
